Half senseless, chock full of salt water, breathless and bruised, with sore head and sore ribs, the luckless Muller contrived to scramble giddily to his feet and blunder hurriedly out of range.
As he once more took hold of the brace, the German gritted his teeth and muttered ferociously:
"Vait, mine fine mister mate, I dink I vill my knife stick into you von dark nacht; yah, mine Gott! Den you no more kick me, ain't it? Yah!"
Then other unfortunates gathered their scattered faculties together as the thundering voices of the mate and bosun mingled with the roar and the scream of the stormfiend.
Pinto disengaged himself from the rough embrace of the fife-rail and crawled up on all fours. Studpoker Bob, who had clung wildly to the poop-ladder after the first mad rush, appeared grumbling in his usual surly fashion, and Jimmy Green limped painfully forth from behind the hatch.
"Haul away!" roared the bosun.
A bright whisp of a moon now appeared, soaring like a flashing scimitar into the eye of the wind, and it was very welcome as it shed its cold beams upon the wild scene.
The wet, glistening decks, the mass of curved cordage bending to the blast, the line of toiling men, the clear-cut figure of the old man swaying at the break of the poop, the raging sea which rolled in great snow-capped mountains of ink, the scudding ragged clouds, and the rounded bosoms of the straining topsails—all these its silver rays showed forth in rugged, strongly touched relief.
The wheel was now too much for the strength of little Angelino, and though he worked furiously, heaving it up and down with all his might, he was always too late in meeting her; the compass card grew more and more unsteady in its movements, and the ship began to swing a couple of points on each side of her course.
The result was that the tired men at the braces spent most of their time under water.